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Dear Sharon,
If I may wax philosophical for a moment, sometimes we work diligently, but alone too much in our genealogical pursuits. Between the two of us we have gathered more contradictions within this family group than seems possible, or conceivable. Our conversation has revealed, for instance, a glaring contradiction in what I had written, but which, though rereading these words a dozen times or more, had managed to escape me. I will get to that in a minute.
Among other problems here, we are both using largely secondary, even tertiary, sources to try to reassemble this group. For my part, grave stone inscriptions are notoriously inaccurate. On top of this, we rely on the transcriptions of these by a third party. I need to be less emphathic in my pronouncements about your husband's kin here.
Here is the biggest contradiction I see in the picture; I had offered this statement:
"George C. Duryee (Jacob^4 K.) married 7 November 1816 at Harlem, New York, Hannah (Bussing) Drake [Records of the Reformed Low Dutch Church of Harlem. NYG&BS Microfilm Collection:32]."
I did not have a birth date, or baptismal date for Hannah B. Duryee, daughter of George C. Duryee and Hannah Bussing, but did offer the record of her younger sister's birth and baptism:
"Susannah Maria Duryee, born 9 November 1812, baptized 8 January 1823 (she was 11 years old at the time), HarlemRDC [NYG&B Record 118:35]."
Okay, so how can a couple who married in 1816 have a child (Susannah) who is born in 1812?!
This is even more difficult to reconcile since Hannah B. Duryee is the eldest daughter, as supposed from the order of children provided by the George C. Duryee will abstract. From one source, you have a birth year of 1805. Yet, from the 1850 US census (another iffy source for ages), we are given by the math a birth year of 1811 for Hannah B. Even if we give or take a couple of birthdays, Hannah would then be born well in advance of her alleged parents' wedding.
Without going back to my original sources on this, I have am obliged to say that I was focusing on the apparent fact that your husband's Hannah B. Duryee was named for her mother, Hannah (Bussing) (Drake) Duryee, wife of George C. Duryee, of Harlem, NY.
But, this is a leap.
I now think (propose, speculate ), that George C. Duryee was married twice. Hannah Bussing Drake, may have been his second wife. One reason to conclude this independent of the dates we have both put forward, i.e., from the 1850 census and from the baptismal record of sister Sussanah, is that it is quite evident that Hannah Bussing was herself married before--to Mr. Drake. The likelyhood, then, is both were widowed when they married. This is because generally that is the way these things usually went. A widower married a widow. Not always, just usually. There are good and obvious reasons for this that we need not spend any time with, I think.
Looked at from this perspective, we might have to proceed under the proposition that Hannah B. Duryee and Susannah Maria Duryee were the children of that first wife, not Hannah Bussing, widow Drake.
But, then, is it some weird coincidence that George C. Duryee should have a daughter named Hannah B. Duryee and then marry a widow named Hannah B. Drake?
Clearly, I need to recheck my sources to make sure that I took the data down properly--especially that marriage date of George C. Duryee to Hannah (Bussing) Drake.
In the meantime, I think that it is true that Hannah. B. Duryea, wife of Jacob R. Wolcott, is the daughter of George C. Duryee. The evidence is admittedly weak, but we do see that Hannah and Jacob named a son George Duryea Wolcott, after Hannah's father. Add to this that a survey of the larger Duryee/Duryea family does not offer other George Duryees who had a daughter Hannah in this era.
In this regard, I would like to make one other note on the given names we are dealing with here. Admittedly this is even more speculative that any notions put forth before. But, I cannot not mention that in the 1850 US census abstract you have provided of the Wolcott/Duryea houshold, we are provided the name of the son, William K. Wolcott. You had noted that the "...researcher's note indicates that William's middle initial might be 'H'." I would like to propose that this may actually be a 'K' as it is true that George C. Duryee's father was Jacob K. Duryee. In my research of this line of Duryee descendants, which is far more concrete and documented than this particular portion of the clan greated by George C. Duryee, the 'K' as Jacob's middle initial stands for Kouwenhoven. This is an ancestral name to this branch of the Duryeas. I think that William K. Wolcott may have been William Kouwenhoven Wolcott. This may be a bit of a distraction from the real point of our conversation and we can discuss that separately if you like, but I did want to mention it. It is likely that the 'C' in George C. Duryee's name also represents this surname, as the Kouwenhovens in this era frequently switched back and forth between the Kouwenhoven and Couwenhoven spelling, often losing the 'u' and often anglicizing the surname entirely, to Conover, then switching back. I descend from the Kouwenhovens and see this frequently in the census records, especially in Brooklyn.
Richard
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